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tv   NOW With Alex Wagner  MSNBC  October 12, 2012 9:00am-10:00am PDT

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it's friday, october 12th, and this is "now." joining me today, franklin four of the new republic, makes his debut on "now," deputy new york city mayor howard wilson, msnbc political analyst and former dnc communications director karen finney and buzz feed editor in chief, the always busy ben smith. while there wasn't exactly blood dripping from vice president biden's shining white canines last night by the end of the first and only presidential debate he had proven himself a fierce and loyal attack dog for president obama. >> the more brazen -- >> that's a bunch of mularkey. >> 7.4 million seniors are projected to lose the current medicare advantage coverage they have. that's a $3200 benefit. >> that didn't happen. more people signed up.
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more -- more people signed up. i don't know what world these guys are in. >> thank heavens we have these sanctions in place, in spite of their opposition. >> oh, god. >> after martha raddtz shifted from foreign policy to the economy biden nailed nearly every attack line team obama has used this cycle. >> we moved in help and people refinance their homes, governor romney said no let foreclosures hit the bottom. but it shouldn't be surprising for a guy who says 47% of the american people are unwilling to take responsibility for their lives. my friend recently in a speech in washington said 30% of the american people are takers. these people are my mom and dad, the people i grew up with, my neighbors. they pay more effective tax than governor romney pays in his federal income tax. >> even when biden wasn't on his campaign talking points he was using his very own special brand of biden-ooez to tug the rug out from under paul ryan's feet.
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>> this is a bunch of stuff. look here's the deal -- >> what does that mean. >> we irish call it mularkey. >> the greatest hope for republicans was a gaffe but biden managed to take his weakness and redirect it towards governor romney. >> romney is a good man, he cares about 100% of americans in this country. with respect to that quote, i think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don't come out of your mouth the right way. >> i always say what i mean. and so does romney. >> this morning both sides are claiming victory and, indeed, everything may change in the next five days when president obama and governor romney take the stage again. but what biden did give is the president -- gave the president a path throwing his detractors off the scent and leading his best friend on the path towards victory. franklin, as the new guy at the table, i ask you first, did vice
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president biden get the obama campaign back in a place it wants to be? >> well, i'm not sure he got them exactly in the place where they want to be, but i think that he did help stem some of the damage. i think he made best bed wetting liberals like myself feel much better, that they had regained some of its offensive juju and weren't going to roll over why the rejuvenated romney walloped them. >> what was your assessment of paul ryan overall? we're going to get to specific sound but in terms of paul ryan and his debate skills last night, what -- how do you grade limb? >> i think what people are looking for when they are going to watch a debate like this, especially a young -- relatively young untested vp candidate like paul ryan, new to the national scene does had he cross the threshold and appear presidential enough. i think he met that test. didn't embarrass himself in any way, didn't have a major gaffe. i don't think you would have come away if you were an independent or undecided
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thinking this guy is unready in some large respect to be president of the united states. i think he did what he had to do. i think joe biden did what he had to do. he went out and, you know, delivered the obama message in the way that i'm sure team obama wished that president had the week earlier. and i think you're right, he gave a little bit of a road map about what the president is going to do when he comes out next week. >> that was definitely a front-loaded assault, saw the ding ding ding. one point it was like what's he going to say for the next hour and a half, he said it all there. karen, i thought one of the more -- where he might have drawn blood as far as if biden actually drew blood on romney was his comments around abortion. >> yeah. >> and reminding people something that has not been discussed almost at all in this election cycle which is the supreme court decisions that may be made by the next president. take a listen to what biden said on abortion. >> the next president will get one or two supreme court nominees. that's how close roe v. wade is. >> and we know romney camp is
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worried about women. they've seen -- >> as they should be. >> but that is a reminder of how high the stakes are. >> absolutely. and also, i mean the answer that ryan gave frankly doesn't reassure women because particularly in the context of you have romney say one thing earlier this week, then not 24 hours later they had to walk it back and sort of tried to walk it back quietly in the conservative media but then like guess what, media is everywhere, you have to tell everybody what you think. so they should be worried about women. the other thing that i think biden did well, i mean these issues, you know, the republicans keep talking about these are social issues. i've said it time and time again these are economic issues when you talk about access to contraception, how much you pay for your health care as a woman, and when rom romney talks about repealing health care reform that's women's costs are going up, i'm not spending on my family, these issues are interconnected for women and that's been the president from president obama and joe biden in the way that romney and ryan are trying to get around talking about it. >> i think also ryan was going
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out of his way to appear sort of moderate and not is logically extreme and then was asked about the abortion question and really like, you know, kind of had a nonanswer almost because he doesn't believe in a woman's right to choose and -- >> he doesn't even agree with romney. when he said in a romney administration here's what position would be. that's not his position. he's actually more extreme than governor romney. >> he was the one sponsoring amendments with -- >> legitimate rape, which i like biden got that in there too. >> that's a separate ding. >> ben, the math thing has always been a trick of late, the arithmetic has been tricky for ryan, i'm referring to interviews with brit hume and chris wallace where he didn't have enough time to explain the math and didn't want to get wonky, a math exchange, let's play this about the 20% across-the-board tax cut. >> you can cut tax rates by 20% and preserve these important preferences for middle class -- >> not mathematically. >> it is mathematically
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possible. it's been done before. >> it has never been done before. >> it's been done a couple of times. >> jack kennedy lowered tax rates -- >> now you're jack kennedy. >> awesome. >> joe biden is -- >> yeah. >> but, you know, actually, couple things there. one is the biden saying not mathematically possible over and over again which is sort of where i think a lot of the left wanted the president to go really hard on this doesn't work. it's not -- it's not amyth ma tick -- the math doesn't work. but then the jack kennedy thing -- i'm curious to know what you thought of that. some on the right thought that was really unnecessary, that was a low blow, that wasn't very statesman like. other people said put the young whipper snapper in his place. >> that moment was just systematic of the debate. joe biden versus joe biden. ryan barely showed up. he passed the threshold and did fine but if you like sneering attacks from this kind of
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senator, you're going to love it. >> wow. >> sneering attacks from this pompous old senator. >> but if -- >> not a joe biden fan. >> i am a joe biden fan. if you think joe biden is over the top you're going to not like it. you saw the reactions kind of split down the middle. >> if you think -- every seniority yen human being thinks joe biden is over the top. >> joe biden -- >> hold on. >> he came in with this cultural expectation, courtesy of the onion he was going to take his shirt off and rather up the podium. like he has a lot of room to run. >> i don't think statesman is a word you particularly associate with vice president biden. he was not statesman-like yesterday. he wasn't supposed to be. it's not the training that he got to go out there. he was going to go out there and beat up romney and he did that. >> by the way, the fact that the republicans are making a big deal about whether he was smiling or sneering or laughing or whatever tells you they know their guy lost. you can't talk about substance you go to oh, well, you know, the vice president was sneering at him. okay.
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he was -- >> whining the other guy was mean to you. >> and by the way if that's mean how will you do against putin or against the ayatollahs. >> our number one geopolitical foe. >> right. >> in terms of the actual -- if you're a swing voter i don't know what it takes to get into that mindset, watch this in an agnostic fashion does that resonate when you hear it's not mathematically possible what he's trying to do is extreme, does that will people -- >> i think actually biden when it comes to some of the factual intricacies of the things he's talking about sometimes veers in directions that deviate from the actual record and also when he starts to explain things in great detail sometimes he veers in the direction of incoherence. when it comes to describing the big things i think that he speak very well and very well to information voters who may be just tuning in. when you -- what you know about romney/ryan foreign policy is they're inclined to start wars. what you know about social
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security and medicare, is that you know these guys have never liked social security and medicare so when they're talking about it, just don't trust them. and i think those broad characterizations are things that can break through. >> you know, let me stick up for joe biden here for a second. >> i love joe. >> joe biden was who he was last night, what you would expect him to be, be he was what the obama cam ap told him to do, he delivered what democrats needed in that evening. i don't know if he won the debate because i thought congressman ryan did a good job but joe biden did a good job for the democrats without a doubt. >> joe biden, people still love you. people will always love you. >> did us proud, joe. >> full love for joe biden. >> nothing but love. >> hearts and stars over people's heads for joe biden. coming up, we're going to actually talk more about foreign policy in libya as well from hand gestures to pearly whites, viewers saw a very animated vice president biden last night but did he pass the mute button
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governor mitt romney's back on the trail right now speaking at a campaign rally in richmond, virginia. let's take a listen. >> what's happening in scranton, pennsylvania. and the unemployment rate there has gone up to 10%. and we were -- recognize this is unacceptable. the fact that we have 23 million
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americans out of work, this is not just something that is a statistic, these are real families, people with a real life and are concerned about their future and that's why paul ryan and i care about each and every american that's out of work and we're going to do everything in our power to get americans back to work again. now the vice president defends the status quo. we're going to fix the status quo and make things better. yesterday i raised some questions about benghazi and the tragedy that occurred there. there were more questions that came out of last night because the vice president directly contradicted the sworn testimony of state department officials. he's doubling down on key denial. we need to understand what happened as opposed to people brush this aside. when the vice president of the united states directly
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contradicts the testimony, sworn testimony, of state department officials american citizens have a right to know what's going on. and we're going to find out. and this is a time for us to make sure we do find out. now i must admit i also enjoyed my own debate about a week ago. that was a good experience. like last night, it was a debate of substance and i got to ask the president some questions that people across the country have been wanting to ask the president. i got to ask them, why was it with 23 million americans struggling to find a job, why was it that he focused his first two years on obama care? which makes it harder to create jobs. why was it with gasoline at about twice the price as when he came in, that he cut in half the number of permits on -- for
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drilling on public lands, why he said no to the keystone pipeline. i asked more questions like why was it with a trillion dollar deficit, he found it in his -- in his heart to put $90 billion into green energy companies that in many cases were contributors to his campaign. at least the owners of those businesses were. and why was it with what he had promised during his campaign, that health insurance premiums he would bring down by $2,500 a year, instead they went up by $2,500 a year. you know, i know we've heard his answers over the campaign. had he says look you can't fix washington from the inside, only do it from the outside. we're going to give him that chance, all right. >> that was mitt romney at a rally in richmond, virginia, karen finney some sharp words. >> not unexpected. >> not unexpected at all. >> i'll start first with benghazi, which we didn't talk about earlier and which we will
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talk about now. mitt romney clearly sees an opening here, foreign policy wise to hit the president. said that president is doubling down on denial in his remarks just a moment ago. let's talk about how the vice president handled that last night. let's play actually a little bit of sound vis-a-vis the benghazi question. >> this lecture on embassy security, the congressman here cut embassy security in his budget by $300 million below what we asked for, number one. >> they wanted more security there. >> we weren't told they wanted more security again. we did not know they wanted more security again. >> okay. there are two things that are happening here not in service of the white house's agenda. one the white house i don't think has been good at delivering a message or transparent and the other is that the romney campaign is using their or e to muddy the water. >> they regrouped after romney's
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disjust truss statement and see an opening. the problem with foreign policy matters there's a lot going on that's classified that we can't know about. this week we learned perhaps the republicans in their hearing may have just outed a cia operation on national television. when you're the challenger it's always easier to poke holes and when you are the incumbent there are a lot of things you can't yet talk about. i believe the vice president when he says we followed the facts. why were the facts so off and so wrong for so long? in the context of a political conversation, it's a lot harder to get to the truth i think than if we were actually able to take a step back and investigate. >> ben, in talking to some of the folks from the national security team, they pushed back and say look, the -- if there was any security it would have gone to tripoli, wouldn't have gone to benghazi, wouldn't have prevented the attack from happening or the number of guys could not have overpowered the terrorists effectively who went and eventually killed chris stevens and members of his
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group. that said, there's enough kind of confusion around this that i guess my question to you is, how much of this is an issue going into november 6th? >> i mean i think it will certainly be an issue. that was joe biden's finest moment when he didn't know about it. maybe he and obama didn't know about these questions. it's clear there were more requests into the state department. even if they might have been met they would still have been overrun. they have not come to an answer of what went wrong basically. one of the things about the foreign policy issues going into the election, it's going to be under the microscope. remember in 2004 the days before eat lex consumed by the discussion of this ammo dumbp in iraq, this weapons depo that had been raided and weapons stolen. after the election i don't think anybody heard about that again. it was not the central issue of foreign policy the kerry campaign said. >> important underlying substance here. we had an ambassador in a
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dangerous situation left vulnerable. also a pseudo scandal in that you don't expect the vice president and the president of the united states to know about a security request at every embassy in the world. so while i think that people are right to be frustrated and to raise hell about this, i'm not sure it's fair to pin a whole lot on biden or obama. >> and how -- but the other thing, this is a little weightier than the ammo question from 2004 also because of the 9/11 piece, which stokes a lot -- it's a weighted just saying 9/11 invokes memories and the fact that this happened on 9/11 although again, the white house is saying this actually had nothing to do with the anniversary of 9/11, this is because egypt was going up or the embassy was being attacked and a catalyst for this group of terrorists to attack the u.s. consulate. >> it's a serious issue, a real issue and will come up in the context of this campaign between now and election day. take a step back, what i find amazing is the extent to which foreign policy benefits the democrats overall in this
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election. when you listen to joe biden talk about the fact that, you know, our troops are out of iraq, we don't know where romney really stands on that, our troops are coming out of afghanistan, we don't really know where romney stands on that, and bin laden, of course, is dead, those are -- >> he is? i mean could they say it more? >> you know they're going to say it adinfa my tum, these are all popular positions with the american people. romney really is on the wrong side of iraq and afghanistan. the president is really fulfilling the promises he made in the last campaign and doing what the american people want him to do. it's very unusual to have an election in which the democrats have the advantage on foreign policy but we got one right now. >> particularly i thought it was good that biden pushed him on syria. are you saying you want troops? are you saying you want troops? howard is right. there's an advantage people don't want to send more ground troops anywhere. we don't want to get involved in another war somewhere in the middle east. reminding people when we have this saber rattling there would be a real cost to that.
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>> couple that with the defense spending america does not want more war and you're the party supposed to be trimming spending and want to establish a 4% floor for defense spending. >> totally critique for obama somehow he's soft. feels in the end that they're still pandering to their base when they talk about foreign policy and agree, martha raddtz pressed him on syria and iran he wasn't able to propose any real alternative to the administration policy and that's pretty damming omission. >> the logic of their position is more troops but they can't go there. >> right. >> they're kind of stuck in this limbo. >> it's semi illogical. coming up, it was the first question of the night, will it continue to be a thorn in obama's side. how does the u.s. -- the attack on the u.s. consulate factor in in the next three weeks. we will ask chris hayes when he joins the panel just ahead. two years ago, the people of bp made a commitment to the gulf.
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mitt romney phoned paul ryan last night to congratulate him on his, quote, fantastic debate showing. how did the president think his running mate fared. >> got to the point of saying that i thought joe biden was terrific tonight. i thought he made a very strong case and, you know, i really think that his pageant for making sure that the economy grows for the middle east came through. >> we will rate last night's performances when inside the actors studio james lipton joins us again in our studio to rate the latest great debate next on "now." [ male announcer ] wouldn't it be cool if we took the nissan altima and reimagined nearly everything in it? gave it greater horsepower
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when my friend talks about fissile material, my friend recently in his speech in washington said 30% of the american people are takers and i love my friend here, why does my friend cut out the tuition tax credit for them. what would my friend do differently? >> let's recall they disavowed their own statement that they had put out earlier in the day in cairo. >> it's incredible. >> thank heavens we had the sanctions in place. it's in spite of their opposition. >> oh, god. >> they've given 20 waivers to this sanction and all i have to point to are the results. >> that's not how it's going. it's going down. >> vice president joe biden didn't just bring sharp words to the debate, he brought an arsenal of facial expressions from the laughter to the smirk to the had it up to here with these guys biden channelled his inner miame and gave a performance on mute. here's last night's three at
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tricks, host of bravo's "inside the actor's studio." great to have you on the set. >> thank you. >> i think this might be the best day ever to have you on given how much stage craft, how much sort of actorly expression there was. my first question to you is, of course, about the vice president. there was a lot of smiling, there was a lot of semi laughter, there was a lot of use of the word my friend. how do you think it played? >> let's start with the my friend. there's a tradition in politics around the world of addressing one's arch enemy as one's friend. it's false. i don't think anybody believes it for a minute. the public doesn't believe it. it's institutionalized. it's there all the time. the greatest example i know of it is a denial of it when glad stone and israeli in england who were arch rivals and arch enemies dispensed with that and on this occasion glad stone said
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assuredly sir you shall die on the gal loss of a veneer yal disease and to which whether i embrace your principles or mistress. >> if only that had been said last night, the venner in yal disease is maybe what we needed. >> that was honesty. that dispensed with the false formalities of my friend, the right honorable gentleman and so forth. they don't feel that way about each other. it's bad acting. >> you thought it rang hallow. >> say again. >> when biden invoked the phrase my friend, you thought it rang hallow. >> no. we're accustomed to it. they always say my friend. these guys are working on the two shot, the split screen. the camera in a film tells where to look and who what to listen to. in the theater we do it with lighting and staging. no one upstages anyone else so we're always focused on where we
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should be focus the. when that put the split screen up there, these guys are -- when they should be off camera they're on camera. it's a disadvantage for them. i thought biden, that he was much better on screen than he was off screen so to speakp when he was in the split screen the laughing and the despair at the -- what he obviously thought were untruths, was difficult to watch. of course we know that the president suffered from that in the last debate. ryan was more comfortable off screen but i thought less comfortable on screen. >> interesting. ben on buzz feed you one of the funniest round ups of the joe biden jesty cuelation, the hot bread, haggling over a carpet, i'm doing it disservice by paraphrasing and pretending to channel my inner biden. your assessment of his i guess split screen distractions did they change the overall assessment of how well, he did?
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>> i mean, it's hard to say. i think people were watching biden instead of listening to ryan. wiped ryan out of the debate. if you thought -- you became prime to hate ryan and laugh at him you were laughing. if not you thought it was ok noxious. >> when we thought paul ryan was listening to joe biden he had this quasi angelic and slight l dismissive removed -- he was looking at biden in a way that could maybe be seen as patronizing, could maybe be seen as somewhat in awe of what was going on? >> i thought as i said before, i thought that the challenger lost the [ inaudible ] and that biden -- and because he was -- excuse me, put it the other way around. he won the offscreen rivalry,
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but he was less effective on screen. they were opposites in that. >> let's talk a little bit about when both were on screen and the straight to camera, the straight to camera moments where they very clearly made the pivot to talking to the american public as i frequently do when we end the show. let's play those straight to camera moments for america. >> any senior out there ask yourself, do you have more benefits today? you do. folks, follow your instincts on this one. folks, all you seniors out there, have you been denied choices? have you lost medicare advantage. use your common sense. who do you trust on this? >> watch out, middle class, the tax bill is coming to you. i want to thank you, joe, it's been an honor to engage in this critical debate. we face a very big choice. what kind of country are we going to be? what kind of country are we going to give our kids?
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>> mr. lipton there, joe biden sort of using that opportunity to say folks, i mean everything was prefaced with folks, to say i'm one of you, we're in this together, this what is these guys are trying to do. paul ryan sort of using the moment to say, it's really serious and i'm trying to bring gravitas to this statement. >> yeah. remember we spoke last time, when they're up there they're like actors on the stage. they have a partner. they have a part ther next to them whom they address, and then they have a partner out there, that's us, the audience and that's the into camera shot. i thought that biden hit a home run off that. i thought when he addressed the camera he was absolutely -- when he says folks, you know he means it. that's biden. he says folks and he means folks. when he looks into the camera, then that's when he engages us directly and i thought when he was at his strongest. the best moments for ryan was when he very occasionally looked into the camera and the line about they're coming after you, that was his best line. but always i think they should
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either address each other or address the camera. those are the only two partners they have on that stage and that's all they've got. it's live or die with that. >> james, i want to go back to my friends, my friend, my friend i would like to return to -- i think that when -- of course joe biden is prone to saying my friend quite a bit because he is a former u.s. senator and that's one of the conventions of being a u.s. senator. but i think that he used that phrase more often last night than he does in the course of i even a normal joe biden conversation because party of his strategy last night was to be consendingly dismissive of ryan and i thought that kunds sense was very much intentional, part was sincere and heartfelt but i think that he in a theatrical way amped it up to make this newbie look like he was a newbie. >> i think that what he was doing was trying to make
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political points which had not been made by the president in the previous debate. i don't think that he was being condescending to him so much as being on the point over and over again. he was going to do what he felt and i think everybody who watched that first debate felt, the president had failed to do. that's what he was doing. you may feel it was condescending that may reflect your opinion of biden or eat lex or may not. >> i love the guy. >> but i did not feel that it was condescending. i think he was really after something and he went after it very vigorously. whether i agree with his politics or not is irrelevant. he really went after his opponent and it was direct and no, i don't feel it was condescending at all. >> i had a different take on my friend. i was watching last night and sort of picked up on that. when you are in debate prep you actually spend a lot of time d discussing how you're going to refer to the person you're
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debating. congressman ryan or mr. ryan or -- >> didn't they rule out congressman ryan for the moderator? >> yeah. >> requested that the moderator refer to him as mr. -- >> for the moderator. >> the moderator. >> doesn't play by the same rule that martha -- >> and you spent a lot of time discussing what you're going to call the other person, what that conveys. i sort of wondered if did they really come up with joe you're going to go out and refer to him as my friend? i don't think so. i think this was an example of him lapsing back into sort of obscenities as you said, what he's comfortable doing, been in the senate for a long time, the right honorable gentleman, my friend, my colleague and you fall into what you're comfortable doing. >> better senate-east than ill ease. >> that's true. >> that's why they do in the senate. >> you would rather refer to him as congressman ryan and remind everybody he's been part of the congress with the lowest approval numbers. >> that's the whole purpose. >> last point here. paul ryan for -- from, you know,
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outside assessment, was not seemingly that nervous. the only tell-tale sign i thought was the consumption of water. >> drink. >> exactly. >> it was -- what did you make of that? there was quite a bit of h20 consumed on the stage. >> people drink water and do things and fidget when they're ill at ease. but it goes back to something that is not ryan's fault and is not biden's fault that two shot, that split screen. i think that an actor in a scene would object at his great moment to the director insisting in the edit on a two shot saying wait a minute, i'm giving my best stay on me, get off the other guy. it's not good for the person who's speaking and not good for the person who's off screen. off screen is when we clear our tho throats adjust our ties. >> this whole thing was a two shot -- >> totally derail the glad stone/israeli exchange. >> they were honest each with
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the other. it may be [ inaudible ] the whole story, it's a wonderful story, i'm not sure that it really happened but it's been told to me as a variety, in any event the good thing about it was that it was really two politicians saying to each other i don't like you at all and this is why i don't like you. >> honesty in politics. thank you to james lipton who we will see again next wednesday following the second presidential debate. always great to have you. >> thank you. >> don't forget inside the actors studio can be seen on bravo. the next episode the show's 250th. quite an accomplish-point. >> wait until you get a lot of that. >> after the break the attack and the questions who knew what and when about the u.s. consulate attack in benghazi and what will it mean for the white house going forward? we'll go up now with chris hayes coming up next.
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the entire reason that this has become the, you know, political topic it is is because of mitt romney and paul ryan. it's a big part of their stump speech. and it's reckless and irresponsible. >> obama deputy campaign manager stephanie cutter saying that the republican presidential ticket is the reason the american attack on benghazi libya has become a political issue. she promised the administration will get to the bottom of what happened. >> absolutely not. you know the administration wouldn't be coming out and giving the facts and ensuring the american people knows what's going on, what intelligence is showing. this is an important piece of information, important piece of our history so that we can make sure it never happens again. >> here now to discuss is msnbc's chris hayes, host of "up with chris hayes" for a segment we like to call up now. my friend, always good to see you. >> great to be here. >> when i call you my friend i
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mean it. >> yes. >> i'm not going to -- >> my favorite part of my friend, at one point he says i love my friend and proceeded to gut him. i love my friend, lied through his teeth. >> i will kill you until you are dead and dead again. >> all right. let's talk about how the white house is handling this libya question. obviously the stephanie cutter back and forth. we talked about the benghazi stuff last night, mitt romney coming out and saying president is doubling down on deceit or some version thereof. your assessment. >> we should be clear about what is contested and what is agreed to and what are the various theories of what's wrong. what the problem is, right? what everyone agrees the first story that the american people were told by the administration about what happened in benghazi was wrong. it was not a riot set off by a youtube video that then overran a consulate. >> which they admit. >> everyone agrees. now the question is, did they just get bad intelligence,
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right? which is what joe biden said last night. this is what intelligence agencies told us. it turned out later it was a preplanned attack. were they essentially manipulating the story because it looked better for them if there was this who could have predicted riot as opposed to an al qaeda cell or al qaeda allied cell in libya pulled off an attack. that's one issue, right? what was channeled up through the chain of command in terms of intelligence reporting that administration knew and when did they level with the american people about what they knew. >> i think that's an important last piece, when. >> yes. >> because, you know, very crass, seasoned political animal in me, says it's not surprising that a month later we're finding out about this and they didn't sort of expedite the -- i know you have issues about transparency and how much they can reveal as far as classified information, but look, you talk about exogenous events, derailing the president's
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campaign for re-election, foreign policy is something you can't control so to me it's not that surprising we're getting dribs and drabs of information because they would rather not talk about this -- >> if we weren't in the context of a political campaign we would be looking at this differently, we wouldn't be saying it's been a month and just now getting the facts. i think we have to acknowledge that. it is a good opening for team romney. they should absolutely be taking it. if i was working on their campaign i would be taking it. i'm not suggesting otherwise. but i am suggesting i think to stephanie's point, of course, the answers are important, of course the information is important, but i think we can't distance that from the fact that -- and they did also say that the intelligence they had with susan rice going on that first weekend she went out in the context of a political campaign five weeks out where the candidate who's got a real deficit on foreign policy and the president has a strength on foreign policy they're going to use this to try to undermine not just on foreign policy but honesty and trust worthiness. >> the republicans were in recess, they came back out of
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recess to have hearings on it. the broader question we're going to talk about on the show tomorrow is this profound one about how much security should diplomats have. there is a tension between security and doing your job as a diplomat. part of doing your job as a diplomat is being out and talking to people. if you're constantly armored and covered and behind bare rack walls you can't do that. we'll talk to a former diplomat about how you calculate that. >> i would be interested to know how the ryan budget and the vice president noted the $300 million into embassy security cuts would have affected or, you know, if you can map that out. it is definitely something that is going to be turned over and over again in the coming weeks. chris hayes, we're excited to hear more from you and your panel on it. chris will always have more on these topics in an intelligent and highly nuanced fashion on his show -- >> don't give me too much credit. >> "up with chris hayes". >> at 8:00 a.m. >> 8:00 a.m. baby. coming up, the important stuff, howard and i have had our baseball hats on the entire set.
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we have nat attitude. as capitol hill facing the fiscal cliff baseball fans in the beltway face another cliff, playoff elimination. must wins, walk-offs and jayson werths. that's coming up next. i'm only in my 60's... i've got a nice long life ahead. big plans. so when i found out medicare doesn't pay all my medical expenses, i got a medicare supplement insurance plan. [ male announcer ] if you're eligible for medicare, you may know it only covers about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. call and find out about an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare supplement plans, it could save you thousands in out-of-pocket costs. call now to request your free decision guide.
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oh, hey alex. just picking up some, brochures, posters copies of my acceptance speech.
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great! it's always good to have a backup plan, in case i get hit by a meteor. wow, your hair looks great. didn't realize they did photoshop here. hey, good call on those mugs. can't let 'em see what you're drinking. you know, i'm glad we're both running a nice, clean race. no need to get nasty. here's your "honk if you had an affair with taylor" yard sign. looks good. [ male announcer ] fedex office. now save 50% on banners. 3-2. and a drive hit deep to left field. looking up, way back, it's gone! >> that just happened. jayson werth's amazing home run means the nats, the washington nationals, hold on for game five tonight against the st. louis cardinals. on behalf of washington, and all
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of the little children who grew up in d.c. without a team to call their own, i salute you jayson werth. washington, d.c. >> bringing tears to my eyes. >> yeah. >> it's beautiful. >> howard, yankees cap. >> there's a metaphor between my frequently worn yankee cap and your infrequently worn nats cap. >> wow. >> there is a door in the floor that's going to open. >> just like hair deferential between the two of you. she can't afford hat head. >> this is how much i'm willing to sk sacrifice for our team. >> it is our team. i have to be honest if it ends up being the yankees, in the playoffs i have to go yankees. i'm a yankee girl. nats until the yankee. >> we'll redirect people to buzz feed sports. >> i was trying to red about politics and everybody is talking about baseball. >> hey, man. >> some things are important. >> exactly. >> that is all for us. thank you franklin, howard, karen and ben. i will see you back here monday with a big fat show at noon eastern, 9:00 a.m. pacific when
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joined by sam stein, matt, and nia malika henderson and mr. sunday morning hugo lindhgren. find us at facebook.com/now with alex. "andrea mitchell reports" is next. good afternoon to you, andrea. >> i love your nat attitude. thanks. we're going to do it. coming up what did the administration know and when did they know it? the attack in benghazi playing center stage in danville and we hear from secretary of state hillary clinton. we'll hear from the campaigns, romney senior adviser tim talon, debbie wasserman schultz and david gregory, chris cizilla and our all star panel. my conversation with actor director ben affleck about "argo" next on "andrea mitchell reports."
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right now on "andrea mitchell reports" the day after the danville. the number twos clashed early and often on foreign policy a